Installed Linux Mint "Debian" - 201303 MATE 64-bit RC on two computers, A and B. Both were running up-to-date LMDE testing before the new installs. Printing was working fine on A, and B was previously not used for printing.

After the new install on new SSDs, neither A nor B is able to print.

On machine A, I attached an Epson Stylus Photo RX500 printer via USB and an HP LaserJet 4000 via the LAN. CUPS browser interface (http://localhost:631), Administration, Find New Printers, sees both printers as available. I click Add This Printer for the RX500, and choose the only driver option, Epson Stylus Photo RX500 - CUPS+Gutenprint v5.2.9 (en). I set Default Options, making only one change, paper size, in the suggested values. The status line after the printer name reads (Idle, Accepting Jobs, Not Shared). From the dropdown Maintenance menu, I click Print Test Page. A screen comes up briefly saying test page sent, with a job ID. But the Epson printer doesn't react in any way, and "No jobs" is listed on http://localhost:631/jobs/ . The printers page, lists the Epson with appropriate data, and under Status reports, "Idle - "Sending data to printer." I delete the Epson.

On machine A, under Find New Printers now only the Epson shows up as available. I unplug and replug the network cable to the HPLJ4000, and ask CUPS to find Find New Printers again. This time it finds the HP as well as the Epson. I click Add This Printer for the HP LasaerJet 4000 Series, and choose from among *eight* driver options, the first, HP LaserJet 4000 - CUPS+Gutenprint v5.2.9 (en). I change the Media Size to Letter and 2-Sided Printing to ON and click Set Default Options. The status line after the printer name reads (Idle, Accepting Jobs, Not Shared). I click Print Test Page. A screen comes up with a job ID. But the HP printer doesn't react in any way. "No jobs" is listed on http://localhost:631/jobs/ . The printers page, lists the HP with appropriate data, and under Status reports, "Idle - "no profiles specified in PPD." I delete the HP. I install it again, choosing the second of two identical lines saying "HP LaserJet 4000 Series Postscript (recommended) (en)" as the driver. I change the Total Memory size and click Duplex Unit Installed and then click Set Default Options. The status line after the printer name reads (Idle, Accepting Jobs, Not Shared). I try to print a test page. I get a job ID. This time the State of the active job shows: "stopped "/usr/lib/cups/filter /pdftops failed" instead of "Idle - "no profiles specified in PPD." as it did with the other driver.

On machine B, I attach the Epson directly via USB. Same results as with machine A. No luck printing. I delete the Epson and unplug it. I attach a Canon CP900 via USB and install it using CUPS. (I had to compile Gutenprint 5.2.9 via CVS from head, to get the CP900 listed in the printers.xml, etc.). The printer seems to be installed okay. The Gimp sees it and thinks it's printing to it, but the printer itself moveth not.

I also tried installing these printers using system-config-printer, which I had to install, since it doesn't seem to be part of the distro DVD. Again, the gimp, etc., thinks the printer is installed, but the printer doesn't print.

(Perhaps I should note that A and B are completely different 64bit machines---different mobo, cpus, memory config, etc.)

Anything on this topic? I'm also unable to print to any network printers..... Also, I didn't even have a Printer Setup option on a fresh install, I had to install it just to have the ability to set up a printer.

dbpbandit wrote:Anything on this topic? I'm also unable to print to any network printers..... Also, I didn't even have a Printer Setup option on a fresh install, I had to install it just to have the ability to set up a printer.

I experiences the same. An usb epson dx5050 was seen by the system, but printing did not work. After some hacking I got it working. I realized that pdf2ps did not work because /usr/lib/libgs.so.9 was missing,only libgs.so.8.71 available. I reinstall ghostscript, python-cups, icc-profiles, etc., and then printing suddenly worked. I now have /usr/lib/libgs.so.9.05.

If I understand correctly, the consensus is that the version of python-cups packaged with LMDE 210303 (i.e., 1.9.48-1+b1) causes this failure, and that subsequent versions (not yet packaged in Debian Testing) resolve it, e.g., the one referenced in message #58 of the bug report above. (However, I must say that installing the referenced version didn't fix the problem for me.)

The final posting in the bug report says "We believe that the bug you reported is fixed in the latest version of python-cups, which is due to be installed in the Debian FTP archive" - but apparently that version is not yet part of the distribution on which LMDE 210303 is based.

I do hope someone understands this better than I do and can point me to a fix. Not being able to print is a big issue - I'll have to install some other distribution if I don't find a fix pretty quickly.

rlindau wrote:If I understand correctly, the consensus is that the version of python-cups packaged with LMDE 210303 (i.e., 1.9.48-1+b1) causes this failure, and that subsequent versions (not yet packaged in Debian Testing) resolve it, e.g., the one referenced in message #58 of the bug report above. (However, I must say that installing the referenced version didn't fix the problem for me.)

And what is the error message now? What exactly isn't working?

Debian Wheezy is finally out and is a new Stable release now, so I highly doubt the problem is somewhere in python-cups: if it was so, they wouldn't left the package as is and pulled the newer one from Experimental instead.

[/quote] Monsta: And what is the error message now? What exactly isn't working? Debian Wheezy is finally out and is a new Stable release now, so I highly doubt the problem is somewhere in python-cups: if it was so, they wouldn't left the package as is and pulled the newer one from Experimental instead.[/quote]

Here's what I myself experienced....

On a completely vanilla system (except for the installation of cups-pdf), I installed a network printer (Brother HL-2010N). Whenever I right-click - properties for the printer, I get an error popup "Option 'printer-resolution' has value '(unknown IPP tag)' and cannot be edited" before the properties display comes up. When I "Print Test Page" from the properties panel, I get an "idle - /usr/lib/cups/filter/foomatic-rip failed" printer status, my print job shows as "stopped" in the document print status display, and nothing prints.

I get the same error messages ("IPP tag" error, and "idle...failed" error) when I try to print to my PDF printer.

The bug report I referenced asserts that installing a later version of cups-python resolves the problem, but doing so didn't help in my case (the "IPP tag" error popup went away, but the "idle...failed" error remained).

rlindau wrote:On a completely vanilla system (except for the installation of cups-pdf), I installed a network printer (Brother HL-2010N). Whenever I right-click - properties for the printer, I get an error popup "Option 'printer-resolution' has value '(unknown IPP tag)' and cannot be edited" before the properties display comes up.

This happens quite often among the users here, but looks like a cosmetic error. For example, it doesn't prevent me from printing the test page on my HP3055. And yes, it can be fixed by getting a newer python-cups from the experimental repo. I can't figure out though why they didn't backport the changes into the stable version. Probably wanted to release Wheezy as soon as possible and were getting tired of 10 months of testing it

Monsta wrote:Erm... did looking at the logs solve the problem magically?

Hah, not at all - just a thank you in advance, while I got organized....

I have tried (on a fresh LMDE install, adding only cups-pdf) to try to print to my PDF printer. Ignoring the IPP tag error (which I understand from your note above), I attempted to print a test page, and got the resulting Printer State: Idle - /usr/lib/cups/filter/pdftops failed. The logs aren't so massive, so here they are in their entireties. I've annotated what I think I see at the bottom of this post.

Net: I don't know if the first "E" message is a problem I need to act on. The "D" messages seem to indicate I'm lacking some piece of ghostscript. There was a post earlier in this string where someone reported that installing later ghostscript resolved his problem; I wonder if I need to do the same.

Thanks for any further guidance - Rob L

Last edited by xenopeek on Tue May 07, 2013 2:28 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Reason:Please put logging in CODE tags (see button at the top of text edit field as you reply).